A Tony-winning show, coming to a theater near you

Philadelphia audiences will have a chance to see Sunday’s night’s Tony winner for best new play – “Vanya and Sonia and Masha and Spike” – in a production next season by the Philadelphia Theatre Company.

Christopher Durang’s comedy is about a brother and sister who live in neurotic desperation in their Bucks County, Pa., family home, where their movie star sister has come to visit with her latest boy toy. It was originally commissioned and produced by McCarter Theatre in Princeton, then produced in New York by Lincoln Center in 2012.

The play, which skewers and celebrates the style of master playwright Anton Chekhov, was an instant hit in New York, starring its original Princeton cast: Sigourney Weaver, David Hyde Pierce and Kristine Nielsen. That cast came back to perform the play when Lincoln Center and McCarter Theatre moved it this year onto Broadway, where the play continues to run. 

As the Broadway production continued to draw audiences, Philadelphia Theatre Company bargained for rights to mount its own production, and secured them. That production is set to open in previews March 21, 2014, and run through April 20.

Three other top winners in their Tony categories are coming next season to Philadelphia, in Broadway tour versions of the shows.

Last year’s best new musical, “Once” — about an Irish singer-songwriter who’s ready to call his career quits until a new woman-friend convinces him otherwise – will run Oct. 29 through Nov. 20 at the Academy of Music.

Last year’s best revival, the Gershwins’ “Porgy and Bess,” will run at the Academy of Music from Feb. 18-23. The production caused something of a stir while it was being prepared, because news leaked out that director Diane Paulus cut nearly an hour from the original opera for the new Broadway version, which will play here. On Sunday night, Paulus won a Tony for her direction of the current Broadway revival of “Pippin,” a stunning production that also won for best musical revival.

“The Book of Mormon,” which won the Tony Award in 2011 as best new musical and continues to be one of Broadway’s toughest tickets, will come to Academy of Music with its national tour cast in a long run at the Forrest Theatre, from July 29, 2014, to Sept. 7.